Issue 2:
Everyone sat and stared at the Jamaican pair for several long seconds after the foreboding announcement from the foreign Watcher. Finally, Buffy, leaning back and adjusting her crimson shades, said to them, "So you traveled more than 3000 miles just to tell me that I have to raise an army willing to fight and die for me in order to stop Armageddon, and do all this within an unknown amount of time. No pressure," she sarcastically retorted.
"Buffy," Giles chastised.
"Well, we got the army part down, though I think it's gonna be kinda tough to bring up the undying loyalty bit in the next meeting," Xander jested.
"Xander," Willow hissed at him.
"By the way," Buffy suddenly intervened, "do you have something besides 'the Final Battle will be fought on the Hellmouth' to bring us? Because I really hate to break this to you, but the whole Final Battle thing, that's been an almost monthly occurrence since I moved here, and the fate of mankind comes around at least once, sometimes twice every six months. Not to mention me fighting evil happens nightly, and I get a battle royale where I kick loads of butt in the process of getting my butt kicked at least once a week. So unless you've got more than what we already know... not very useful."
"Er..." the black Englishman frowned in thought for several moments, finally saying, "I only know what the prophecies tell me. That you are vital to humanity's survival and that you must gather an army loyal to you in order for us to triumph."
"And again, not very helpful," Buffy remarked.
"Thanks for stopping by, you'll be leaving now, right?" Cordelia rudely asked, while softly shoving him back away from the group.
"Excuse me?" Samuel Zabuto, Giles' Jamaican counterpart, seemed genuinely surprised at the brisk treatment and the apparent brush-off of his dire warning.
Kendra took it a bit more personally; as an attack on her Watcher.
The mocha-colored Slayer near-blurred as she raced forward, probably to knock some sense into her own counterpart, or more likely to blindly attack until her Watcher told her to stop. As it so happened, Cordelia got there first, though she could have been the Jamaican Slayer's target just as easily as Buffy could've been. When everyone thought to look again, they saw Cordy's gloved hand tightly gripping the forearm of a fist that was aimed at the cheerleader's heart. Thankfully, only the mutants and Giles could also see the expression of painful strain on the other girl's face while she was held by the mutant Rogue.
"You /really/ don't want to be touching me," Cordelia hissed in warning, making sure that the man behind the girl she held couldn't see her lips moving. To emphasize her point, she squeezed her hand just a fraction tighter until the look on the Slayer's face shifted from one of strain, to one entirely of pain.
With little effort, Cordy tossed the girl back so she only back-stepped three paces before regaining her balance. Before the Slayer could launch herself again, Zabuto cried out, "Kendra! Enough!"
Dutifully, and a little too cowed for Buffy's taste, Kendra stepped back and stood quietly beside her Watcher, hands at her side, and her face lowered to look at the ground. The blonde mutant frowned briefly, crossed her arms, and then consciously resettled her face to one of neutrality. Willow, however, couldn't possibly miss the influx of raw emotions that spilled through her psychic rapport with her best girl friend. She looked concerned over in Buffy's direction, but made no attempts at communication or further draws of attention to her friend.
"Loyal friends is an excellent start, but normal people hold little chance of facing off the danger coming. No matter how much they /think/ they know of the supernatural," Zabuto spoke down to, mostly Giles but Buffy was included in the glare, completely ignoring the others. Which, of course pissed Cordelia and Xander off that much more.
"We must begin planning and preparing immediately," the foreign Watcher commanded, but paused when Giles stepped forward.
"Watcher Zabuto... Samuel, I'm afraid that it's not quite that simple," Giles cautiously remarked. "You see, first of all, we have had some rather troubling dealings lately with the Order of Teraka, and first off we need you to confirm your identity as a Watcher, to make sure you are who you say you are, which I'm sure you understand given the circumstances."
Zabuto nodded, and replied, "Of course, I was prepared for such and I can provide absolute proof of my private identity, and it is, of course, standard procedure to contact the Council in, as you say, circumstances such as these."
"Excellent, I'm glad we understand that much," Giles agreed, then continued, "Unfortunately, until I do receive such confirmations, we cannot allow you into our group with just your word and papers or identifications that could easily be forged. Secondly, while we will certainly look into the matter of researching this 'threat' you have spoken of, without further proof or at least some clue as to it's true nature or form, I'm afraid that it will have to, as American's say, take a back-burner to our normal methods of guarding the Hellmouth."
"I'm not sure I..." Zabuto was confused.
"It means," Buffy answered for her Watcher, "thanks for nothing, we'll call you when we need you, in the mean time, we're just going to keep doing things our own way, OK?"
Kendra and her Watcher were flabbergasted. Rude and cautious was one thing, but the people they had traveled so far to help were outright dismissing the importance of the message they had brought. To say that they had expected a very different reception would've been an understatement. Kendra, completely at a loss, stayed quiet and even stepped back a little as she detected signs of her Watcher quickly losing his temper.
"Are you truly going to ignore this warning? I assure you, it is entirely legitimate," he seemed to plead with Giles.
"We never ignore signs of an approaching apocalypse," Giles immediately replied, "It's just . . . things are done a bit differently here, is all."
"Yeah, whenever we're worrying ourselves to death we like to go kill vampires and beat up Willy the Snitch," Xander jested, "not sit around drinking gallons of Tea, capital 'T'."
Giles, blushing, began cleaning his glasses and grunted, "Well, yes, something like that."
"So unless you have a name, a date, or even someway to prevent it from becoming all-out war," Buffy spoke seriously, "you're not much use to us beyond telling us what to do, and newsflash 'mon'. We're American. We don't /like/ getting told what to do. So like Cordy said, unless you've got something better, don't let the doors hit you on the way out. Though honestly a phone call woulda saved you some money."
Zabuto just stared, apparently stunned at this casual and rude treatment, before huffing up like a blowfish and turning on his heel and storming out of the Library. Kendra, just as stunned, was a step behind him all the way.
"Can I kill him?" Buffy, Xander, and Cordelia asked Giles together.
Giles sighed and didn't bother answering, just putting his glasses back on and going to his office. Willow finally told each of them 'No' in a strong telepathic voice. She, of all people, knew just how much it took to get Buffy and Xander to consider violence against normal humans, which unfortunately Zabuto was, but on top of that was the X-Men spirits' ingrained pacifism enforced through Professor Charles Xavier. With few exceptions, every one of the X-Men chose violence as a last resort, unless it was against a proven enemy.
What scared Willow the most was not that Zabuto had managed to press all their button in the worst ways possible in just a few minutes, but the fact that in doing so had made Buffy, Xander and Cordelia /genuinely/ and REALLY want to kill the foreign Watcher. Compared to that, Willow was almost glad that the furthest her fantasies had gotten was injuring him enough to put him in the hospital for several months. Or in a coma for the rest of his life.
"Can you believe that guy!" Xander shouted once the Library doors had stopped swinging.
"Sadly," Willow answered, "yes. Yes, I can. Although don't take it too hard on him. The whole 'holier-than-thou' attitude is something he was made to learn when he became a Watcher and he had to work a lot at it. It's kind of a thing that nobles once did to make people obey their every whim. Usually in starting wars and going into battle."
"Did you see the look on his face when we didn't just immediately fall over and start fawning over him like some kind of savior?" Buffy asked.
"Did you see the look on /her/ face when she attacked me just cause of what I said?" Cordy pointed out.
"Well, since 90 of the time it's nothing but insults coming out of your mouth, I can see where she might have overreacted," Xander gave the white-striped brunette a teasing grin.
She grinned back, but before she could reply, Giles walked back out, his arms loaded down with thick books. Cordy and Buffy moved quickly and relieved him of his burden, setting them on the table, while the Watcher thanked them and then began to pace in front of the long table.
After a couple of passes, Buffy asked him, "Giles, do you seriously think that anything that Zoo-Boo guy said will have a prophecy written about it? Giles, you've said it yourself. Chaos changed everything. After Halloween, even the stuff that is prophecy, do you really think /any/ of it is going to happen the same? Although, I've got to say, some of what was 'written' before didn't exactly turn out the way that it was 'written', if you know what I mean?" She added air-quotes for each of the "written"s.
"Yes, well, that doesn't remove the necessity to, shall we say, rule out all other contenders, now does it?" Giles testily remarked.
"So then, what's with the pacing?" Buffy asked.
"Hm?" he stopped for a moment, looking at her confused.
"You only pace when you're mind is going into overdrive, and that only happens when you've figured out that there's actually something worse going on than just the typical Hellmouth hi-jinx," she clarified.
"Like the fact that the chaotic events of Halloween have consequences that will hereby affect the entire world, possibly starting THE Armageddon, if not destroy the whole planet in the mean time?!" the Watcher shouted in exasperation.
The teens were stunned into silence for several moments. Giles resumed his pacing with a sigh, then in a quieter tone continued, "It's just . . . I've created this Buffy. No, no, I know it was Ethan and his utter stupidity, but perhaps if I had just caught it earlier, or if maybe I'd insisted that you patrol, but no, I was completely convinced that nothing ever happens on Halloween. What a fool."
"Yeah, well, this is the Hellmouth," Xander tried his best attempt at making Giles feel better, "None of the normal rules apply. You either adapt or . . . well, I think everybody can fill in their own blanks on the or."
"He's going to make her patrol tonight," Willow suddenly said with certainty after a minute's silence. At everyone's stares, she clarified, "Zabuto. He's going to make Kendra patrol tonight. He's convinced that we're a bunch of teen-adrenaline-junkie idiot kids and that Giles has been 'addled' by the Hellmouth's emissions, so he's going to . . ." she blinked, apparently surprised by what she was picking up from him, "He's going to, and I'm quoting here, show us how it's done and prove that we're either incompetent and that he needs to be placed in charge, or just that he's better than us with the same results." She frowned again, and then reported, "He's calling the Council now, from his mobile phone. Giles, I think you might want to get on top of this with the Council."
"And tell them what Willow?" the Watcher queried, exasperated, "That a gifted young girl at the High School where my Slayer is attending, who now possesses Chaos-imbued telepathic talents that are, quite literally, comic book originated has been spying on a fellow Watcher, who came to me in good spirits with a dire warning that we then threw back in his face just because he wanted to be treated with a modicum of respect?!"
"Mostly I thought you'd like to emphasize to them that we can't do anything without a name, date, or something more than 'there's something bad coming', so you won't lose your job," the redhead demurely answered.
Giles stared at her over the rims of his glasses for a few seconds before sighing deeply and going back into his office, slamming the door, and began placing long-distance phone calls.
/Bronze/
/Early Evening/
Later that same day, the group of friends calling themselves the X-Slayerettes, gathered together in a booth at the local teen hangout and dancing club the /Bronze/. The girls were all decked out in their clubbing dresses, which for Cordelia meant it covered every inch of her skin from neck to shoe, yet was tight enough that she might as well have just painted her clothing on.
Buffy was in a pair of low-rider tight jeans that came several inches below her navel, and a tight low-cut black shirt that covered her arms from elbow to shoulder, yet hung just off the shoulders, leaving the upper portion of her chest bare, and then it clung tightly to the rest of her curves before cutting off several inches above her belly button.
Willow, in an ever increasing change from the wall flower she once was, had dressed, seemingly to match Buffy, though her shirt stopped at the shoulders on both sides, and was red instead of black. Her low-rider denims, however, seemed to be held a couple inches lower simply because this was /Willow Rosenberg/ wearing them, and all three lovely ladies were wearing high-heels to match with each of their outfits.
Xander, if it were possible, was in an even more surprising outfit than Willow, as first of all it was color-coordinated, and secondly, it fit him like an Italian leather glove rather than a burlap sack as most of his other clothing did. There was a lot of blue, and some navy, with just a touch of white splashed in to bring out his eyes. What was even more shocking, however, was that when he walked in, he actually had a girl on each arm, and beyond that, they were /each/ his date for the evening. Not so surprising was that they were each Chaotix, and were being given the HSL sales-pitch by the uncanny Iceman.
Thankfully though, the others didn't have to put up with being Xander's "friends" while his dates sat around and hung on his every word or drooled over his new social skills. The 'dates' happened to be meeting several of their own friends at the /Bronze/ and after a brief round of introductions, Xander left his . . . new female friends in the company of their group, and came back to the booth to sit down with his best friends. Possibly excluding Cordy.
"He bimbo-for-brains," he teased his fellow mutant, "answer me this. How did you ever manage to date 8 guys in a single week? And how did you ever get by being this popular? I'm exhausted and the dance floor hasn't even opened up yet."
"First of all, ultra-loser," she replied with a glower, "you aren't even close to being as popular as I've ever been for even a second of my life. Secondly, I'm a girl, and a hot one at that, so guys don't really care if I take longer breaks than they do. Lastly, I'm Cordelia Chase. They would be so lucky just to spend five minutes around me, let alone an entire date."
"Ah, that's the Cordy we all know and despise," Xander teased back.
"Please," Buffy interrupted before things could get any more heated between the two mutant teens, "we get enough of that during the day in school. Not here, and please, not now, OK?"
Grumbling, the two nodded their heads and muttered together, "Fine."
"Guys, I'm worried about Giles," Willow said after a moments silence.
"He's a grown man Will," Buffy remarked, "He can take care of himself. Hell, he helps take care of me practically all the time. I think he can handle a little inter-watcher rivalry. Besides, I just got him broken in, and you know how long it takes me to train my Watchers just so."
They laughed at that, but the frown marring Willow's expression didn't go away as Buffy'd hoped it would. "Seriously Willow," she added to further console her friend, "if Giles needed our help, all he'd have to do is ask and we'd give it in a heartbeat. And if he were in trouble that he couldn't handle, he /would/ tell us."
"Yeah, you're right," the redhead finally cracked a smile, so Buffy turned back to the double trouble of Cordelia and Xander sitting across from each other.
Unfortunately, that meant that she didn't catch the redhead suddenly frown and turn around to look behind her. It wasn't because she was still worried over Giles, no, it felt to her like she was being watched. And not watched in the good way.
Willow cast out with her telepathic senses, feeling for whoever was watching them, or rather watching her. Tracking the feeling, her head turned of its own accord until she was facing the stage and was staring into the eyes of the lead guitarist, who was staring right back at her with a strange intensity that sent chills up and down her spine.
It was only after she broke eye contact and shook herself to get rid of the chills that she realized she recognized the young man on stage. It was the same guy that had also been selected for recruitment by the computer software company at the career fair. What was his name again? Had he even told her?
She looked over at the stage again to find that he was still staring at her. And he was still playing along perfectly with the rest of the band. Reading off the drum and some of the shirts, Willow assumed, correctly, that the band's name was "Dingoes Ate My Baby". Weird as that, and the guy staring at her were, she thought the lead male singer wearing a bright yellow trench coat and the lead female vocal having purple hair was what really took the weirdness cake.
For a moment though, she felt a wave of dejá vu after looking at the band playing on stage, but then shook it off. She was probably just imagining things. Only . . . this /was/ the Hellmouth, and Jean's experience told her that a telepath never 'just imagined' anything, no matter how far-fetched or how tired or disillusioned they were.
But still . . . it was impossible!
Looking again, she saw that there were six members of the band, two girls, four guys. Besides the male lead singer and the guitarist, there was the drummer, who she noted had wavy blonde hair and had very broad shoulders beneath a nice looking outfit, and a keyboardist that had strawberry blonde hair and was dressed in mostly dark denim, from jacket to pants. The two girls, Willow noted, was the female lead singer with the purple hair (it actually looked natural in the current lighting) dressed similarly to Cordy in that all her clothing fit tightly to her body, but it was also mostly black leather, unlike Cordy's silks and satins. The other girl, on base if Willow judged the instrument correctly, was actually more cute than anything. Short, petite, and had soft brown hair that she held back in a pony tail. Like the keyboardist, she wore jeans and a denim jacket.
Willow couldn't help the feeling that she knew these people from somewhere. Like seeing a childhood friend all grown up, but different. And as far as she knew, she hadn't grown up knowing these people. At least not on the level that she felt from the connection she was feeling with them.
"Oh my gawd. I don't believe it," Buffy hissed so only the others could hear.
"What? What is it?" Willow, suddenly flustered, asked turning her head every which way, subconsciously wondering if her friend had caught her making eyes at the band and was jealous.
Willow stopped herself, shock radiating through to her core as the thought surprised her. Jealous? Why should Buffy be jealous? And why would she, Willow, want her to be jealous?
"Check it out," Buffy nodded in the direction of the door.
The three other teens turned to look and collectively their jaws dropped. Kendra the Vampire Slayer, still dressed the same they had last seen her, was prowling through the throng of teens, sticking out only for two reasons. She was hot-to-trot and dressed to match, and she had the look of a predator on the hunt, which kept everybody from approaching her.
"I'll get her," Buffy grumbled, getting up.
"You weren't kidding when you said the jerk was going to send her out tonight," Xander looked to Willow. She shook her head, turned to glance at the band once more before focusing her gaze on the pair of slayers near the entrance.
"So much for a group night off," the redhead grumbled, getting up to back up Buffy. "You two stay here. Hopefully Buffy and I can get her to join us before she stakes Mark or one of the others by mistake."
"By the way Wills," Xander asked, "can you check just how many uh/real/ vampires are in here tonight?"
Willow blinked, scanning the crowd for the tell-tale thought-patterns of demonic vampires (without souls) in the same instant and replied, "Three. Two badly dressed guys talking to the Cordettes over there, and the girl that Kendra is stalking right now. Uh... correction, Kendra is stalking Mark, who is being hit on by the real vampire."
"Oh this should be good," Xander grinned and leaned back to enjoy the show.
"You go find out what Mark is doing," Buffy ordered Willow, "I'll divert crazy-girl to the other two vamps. Those two, right?"
/ Yep / came the telepathic reply as Willow moved off to intercept the Chaotix vampire.
Buffy shouldered her way, gently, through the crowd and barely managed to intercept Kendra before the Jamaican Slayer had gotten to Mark and his apparent "date" for the evening. Which was extremely odd since he had a steady girlfriend who was on the dance floor not too far away.
"You!" Kendra nearly shouted once she recognized Buffy as the one that was holding her back and pushing her away from Mark, the vampire she'd been hunting.
"Yeah, me. Look, the kid you were eyeballing? Not a vamp. He's what we like to call here in the States, a Goth. It's ordinary humans that like to dress like vampires. Those two," she briefly pointed, "are vamps. Now let's play the... Hey!" Buffy shouted as Kendra shot forward towards the two vamps that had been pointed out, but thankfully Buffy's reactions were just as quick as she stopped the other Slayer before she got too far, grabbing her wrist.
Kendra stopped mostly in shock as she looked down at her held wrist, feeling the raw strength in that grip and looking fearfully up at her predecessor. Her encounter with Cordelia earlier that day was still something that confused and frightened her. After all, in Kendra's world, there was no greater power than the power of the Slayer. And something or someone that could grab and hold the active Slayer with such ease scared the crap out of her.
"Gawd, would you just wait for half a second!" Buffy raged, not even noticing the surprise and fear in her counterpart at the moment.
"I am trying to do my duty!" Kendra growled, trying unsuccessfully to squirm out of Buffy's grip. "I do not shirk my destiny as you have. I am de Vampire Slayer, and I will slay dos vampires and save de world, no matter what you say!"
"OK, seriously, need to keep your voice down, and secondly," Buffy practically dragged the other Slayer off the dance floor against one of the pillars so they were mostly out of the crowd, "there's doing your duty and then there's being just plain stupid while you try to one-up me. What were you going to do anyway? We're in the middle of a very crowded building. Were you just going to walk up to them, announce you're the Slayer, and expect them to just stand there casually while you pulled your stake out and shoved it into their chests? And maybe you even expected everybody in here to ignore it and say nothing of two vampires dusting in front of their eyes, or would you actually be deluded enough to believe that everyone here would be grateful and make you a national hero? I don't know how they do things in Jamaica, but we don't go around dusting vamps in front of a dozen civilian witnesses."
"And you would just let dem kill dos innocents instead?" Kendra challenged.
"Well while we don't go around killing vamps in front of people, guess what? Unless there are enough of them to control the panic, they don't go around killing people in front of witnesses either." Buffy sarcastically retorted.
"What I do is I identify them, I track them, and before they kill anybody, I follow them to some secluded area and /then/ I make with the slaying. Now, would you like to try it my way, or would you rather put your way of walking up and staking blindly to the test?" the blonde questioned.
Kendra scowled, but she just nodded and Buffy finally released her.
"Very well, we'll do it your way. For now," the Jamaican glared at the California blonde.
"Now as I was saying before you went off half-cocked," Buffy adjusted her red-tint sunglasses as she lectured, "Let's play the jealous girlfriends routine. Both of us..." she suddenly trailed off as her eyes glazed over, to Kendra it seemed as if she were listening to a voice that was not there. Until Buffy suddenly looked up, as though startled, in the direction the vamps had been in, only they weren't there anymore.
"Shit. Plan B, track them, fast, and kill them at your first opportunity," Buffy ordered while leaving the other Slayer there against the pillar. She was following Willow's instructions on which way the demonic vampires were headed, but the crowd was moving against her at the moment, making things more difficult than it should've been. She'd just made it to the back door in time to see one of the girls that had been with the vamps go through it.
Growling to herself, her glasses momentarily flashing red as her temper flared, Buffy started tearing through the crowd and just caught the door just as it was about to close. A heartbeat later she was through it and in the alleyway, where the two vamps were trying to sweet talk their soon-to-be victims into a round of necking. Buffy wasn't gonna let that happen.
Kendra was literally right behind the mutant Slayer, and she was as ready as she ever was to slay some vampires, but even she, being the current Slayer, was not prepared for what happened next.
"Hey bozos!" Buffy shouted out loud, drawing the vampires' attention away from their would-be victims, "Party's over! Now let... oh. Hey there girls, didn't realize who you were. Sorry for interrupting, carry on."
The two vampires looked at each other in confusion after that, then shrugged and one of them growled out in the Slayers direction, "Whatever. I always did enjoy it when the meat delivered itself."
"Oh, for that I hope they make it hurt," Buffy commented.
"Huh?" the other vamp asked, turning back to the still quiet girls behind them.
Only to find a pair of red eyes freezing him to the spot, framed in blue hair and white armor. The next thing the vampire knew, his head was cut off and he was turning to dust. At the sound of his companion dusting, the first vampire turned back around, only to be set on fire with a glance from the blonde in the black goth-dress.
For several moments after the vampires were dusted, the alley was unusually quiet. Behind her, Buffy could hear Kendra moving. Typically, instead of stuttering or fainting or panicking or anything like that, the Jamaican Slayer exploded into violent action, diving forward to attach what she viewed as threats. In her eyes the blue-haired Chaotix was a demon of some kind and the goth girl was some kind of evil witch.
Buffy, clued in to how a Slayer's mind works, and having experienced her counterpart's proclivity towards misconceptions already, she was already acting before Kendra even started to move. "Down girl!" she ordered as she physically held the other Slayer back. It was surprisingly a lot easier than it should've been, she knew.
"Don't mind her, she's new and a little overeager sometimes," Buffy explained to the other Chaotix. They just glanced at the two Slayer, while the blue-haired one nodded stiffly, before reverting back to a more normal-appearance and the two walked back into the Bronze.
"What are you doing?!" Kendra screamed. "They're demons and you're letting them get away?! What kind of Slayer are you!!"
She finally managed to wrangle herself free, though actually, Buffy let her go once she was sure no one else was in the alley.
"All right," Buffy got in the other girl's face, "lets get something straight here. You are a Slayer, I'll give you that. But this is my town, and I have more experience with how things go down around here. You and your Watcher are not allowed to come here, no matter your intentions, and start making like your the saviors of mankind. You also cannot attack everybody and every /thing/ that looks the slightest bit non-human. Hate to break it to you, but in this town, even some of the things that /look/ demonic are on our side."
"You are /no/ Slayer!" Kendra hissed, like it was some kind of insult.
"You really wanna do this?" Buffy asked.
Kendra didn't know what she meant, but looking at her again, the Jamaican realized she actually did. Instead of answering, she just nodded and stepped back, her body tense and her eyes angry. Buffy just stood there, neither taking the offense or the defense, but ready nevertheless.
Kendra moved first, as Buffy knew she would, a sharp fast jab to the face. Buffy simply leaned her body to the side, letting the fist go by, and absently noting at least six different openings that she could take advantage of with a single move to end the fight permanently. Another twenty openings that would take two or more moves to kill her opponent, and over a hundred that would lead to something you'd see more in the movies or on TV, a lot of fancy footwork and fighting that would lead to a few bruises and nothing more. The blonde Slayer did nothing, resuming her former position when Kendra pulled her fist back.
Barely a full heartbeat after the first punch was thrown, Kendra threw another. Buffy ducked around that one to, and the follow-up roundhouse kick. The leg-sweep she jumped over and the frontal body kick she stepped back and two feet to the left to avoid. Another dozen punches, five more kicks and an attempt at grappling that wound up with Kendra running face-first into the wall, Buffy was still standing in the same spot she started at and Kendra was out of breath.
"Why do you not fight back?" the out-of-breath Slayer demanded.
"Why do you fight at all?" Buffy retorted.
"It is my destiny, I am the Slayer, it is what I do," Kendra replied by rote.
"It's your destiny to kill innocent girls who defended themselves from a pair of vampires? It's your destiny to fight another Slayer and try to kill her just because she stopped you from killing those innocent girls? It's your destiny to have a stick the size of Big Ben up your butt? As for what you do... you're not very good at it, are you?"
That had the desired effect of pissing the Jamaican teenager off aplenty and had her seeing so much red Buffy was briefly surprised that her eyes /didn't/ flash red the way her own did. Kendra dove forward at a speed that would blur to the normal human eye. To Buffy, she knew she couldn't avoid it, so she had to block, or be knocked back. She chose to end it quicker than that.
One instant the mocha-skinned teen was running forward faster and with greater strength than even she knew she had. The next, she was being held several inches off the ground and was being choked by strength greater than she'd ever imagined and looking into a pair of crimson eyes that looked like they could blast her to pieces as well as look at her.
"News flash honey," Buffy hissed back at the foreign Slayer, "there are things in this town that are a /lot/ stronger than a Slayer. Not all of them are as friendly as me and the others have been."
"What... are... you?" Kendra gasped out, only just getting enough air to breathe, and talk.
"I used to be the weirdest freak in town. I used to be the one girl in all the world that was supposed to save it from the demons, the vampires, and the forces of darkness. Now..." Buffy sighed and put the other girl back on her feet. "Now, I'm just one of several hundred freaks that were changed by Halloween. By that wave of Chaos your Watcher talked about. We don't want the Watcher's Council looking any closer than it already is into Sunnydale or the Hellmouth. Things are complicated enough without having the Brits deciding they need to start sending sweeper teams to hunt us all down and try either capturing us for experimentation, or pegging us for extinction."
"What are you?" Kendra repeated, rubbing her neck and stepping further back from the girl she had thought was the previous Slayer.
"I am a mutant. Specifically that is. We've come up with a new term for the general quantity; Chaotix. Touched by the Force of Chaos, changed irrevocably, and from this day forth I am whatever the hell I want to be, no matter what anybody else tells me," Buffy answered honestly from the heart.
"Demon?"
Buffy snorted. "You have a very limited view of the world, don't you? It's always either human or demon with you, isn't it? Fine, if you must know, I'm human. Just with some extra thrown in, on top of being the Slayer that is."
"Extra?"
In demonstration, Buffy looked down the alley and casually noticed another vampire trying to sneak up behind them, and this one was a real demonic vampire rather than one of the Chaotix Vamps that were popping up here and there. Once he was out in the open enough, she let loose with an optic blast that practically atomized his chest cavity, heart included, dusting him instantly after that.
Kendra turned to look, her eyes wide with shock, and noticed the dusting vampire. Looking back to Buffy, who was calmly putting her shades back on, her mouth dropped open to further lament her shock.
Buffy herself just shrugged and commented, "Hey, it's faster than using a stake."
At that, Kendra had to agree, but shooting beams of red light out of the eyes, she'd never heard of such a thing. And typically, until her Watcher explained otherwise, everything that she didn't already know about was cataloged as 'demon' in her mind. But this was the other Slayer and other than being typical of Americans and being very rude and ungrateful, she and her friends had done nothing demonic whatsoever.
Also she was still in a state of shock, and so allowed Buffy to pull her back into the club.
Meanwhile, back inside, Willow was staring up at the live band again, the oddest sense of deja vu not allowing her to drop the matter. There was just something so familiar about them, and not just the guitarist, but all of them.
Finally the time came for the band to take a break, another group coming up to take their place. Willow absently told Xander and Cordelia that she'd be back in a minute after checking on something, then she quickly got up and followed the band as they went back stage. A minute later, she caught up with them, only to see the guitarist slipping out the back door. Frowning in confusion, she quickly followed.
They stood in a semi-circle around the door, waiting for her. The guitarist that had saved her life, potentially anyway, stepped forward and almost growled out, "Why are you following us?"
"Uh..." Willow was at a loss of what to do, so she decided to borrow from Buffy's handbook, and returned with a simple, "Huh?"
"Why are you following us?" the purple-haired female lead-singer snapped out in a familiar sounding accent. A British accent, the redhead telepath realize a moment later.
"Why would I follow you?" Willow innocently asked back, bringing up some of her old shyness at the same time to further help her. "Aren't you guys the band that was just playing? I... I came out here be...b-because I, I... I, uh..."
"Stop with the lying," the red-haired keyboardist spoke with a Scottish accent, "Yer not too good at it anyway lass."
"What do you want?" the tall, broad-shouldered very, very handsome drummer demanded.
"W-want?" Willow stuttered, playing up the shy innocent lost little girl.
Rather than hound her with another question, the guitarist, now right in front of her, just took another step forward and held up his left hand in front of her face, not to hit her but more like to show her his fist.
/SCHNIKT!/
A fist that was suddenly sporting three foot-long razor sharp metal claws, sprouting from between the knuckles of his fingers. Willow's eyes went wide at both the implications and the very sight of what she was seeing, literally right in front of her eyes.
"Why?" was all his soft growling voice said to her.
Willow wanted to answer. She actually did, wanted to tell them how excited she was to have found them and to explain to them what had happened and everything else, but all she could do was stare, wide-eyed at the claws. Her mouth worked up and down, gaping like a fish, but no sounds were forthcoming.
Finally, he snorted, withdrew the claws and stepped back.
"Don't you think that was a bit much Oz?" the lead male-singer in the yellow trench coat whispered to the guitarist.
"Nah, probably wasn't enough," 'Oz' growled back, not taking his gaze from the redhead.
"Who..." Willow's voice croaked, "Who are you people?"
"We're the one asking the questions luv," the purple-haired girl snapped. "Who are you first?"
"W-will... Willow Rosenberg," she answered. "I... I, uh, I dressed up as Jean Grey for Halloween. We... we thought there weren't any other X-men, or people that dressed up as X-men, on Halloween. Why... why didn't you answer your communicators when B... when Cyclops called out? Why didn't you come out sooner? Who did you all dress up as, though I think I can take a few guesses, but...?"
The band took a nervous look at each other before the purple-haired girl snapped out again, "I thought I told you we were asking the questions!"
Willow, not wanting a moment like this to be wasted, telepathically reached out to all her friends, most especially Buffy, and psi-shouted/ Guys! Get out to the alley behind the Bronze! It's really, really important! /
Inside the club, Xander and Cordelia immediately looked up, shared a glance and then scrambled to the door, Xander apologizing profusely to his dates before donning his ice armor and racing through the crowd, whereas Cordy just flew over them without a care. Buffy, who was actually still in the side-alley with Kendra, just stopped, and then turned and raced alongside the building to the back edge as fast as her Slayer muscles could move her.
In the same instant, however, the English-accent purple-haired girl exclaimed to all the others, "Shit! Guys, she just called for reinforcements! We gotta get outta here!"
"No, wait, it's not like that," Willow tried to explain.
"Shut up!" the one who had now undoubtedly dressed as /Psylocke/ screamed at her.
Moments later, why the group was still scrambling to move, Cordy flew over the edge of the roof and hovered above them, glad she'd gone for wearing ultra-tight pants instead of miniskirts. Xander came around in full Iceman form from the open end of the alley, and both Buffy and Kendra vaulted the fence that linked to the side-alley, Buffy's glasses still off so her glowing red eyes were clearly visible.
"See, I told you I wasn't the only one that got mixed up like that," the tall boy in the yellow trench coat slapped Oz's back in a berating manner.
"We outnumber you," was all the young man said, the claws from both hands unsheathing with a unique sound. The X-Slayerettes all froze at that sound and did multiple double-takes at the group they'd come to surround.
"What the hell?" Buffy asked, stunned.
"Let's get out of here," the cute brunette in denim panicked, grabbing the redhead guy beside her, then they began to sink into the ground as she phased them through the concrete.
"Wait!" Willow screamed, then she exerted her telekinesis to the level that she was surrounded by a hot-pink aura and began to float above the pavement. "See! You aren't the only ones! We dressed up as X-men too! We're friends!"
"Doubtful," Oz growled at her.
Despite their reluctant appearance, Willow's words did stop the denim-clad pair from running any further, and it also had the side effect of making the rest of the band assume it was time to take the gloves off as the saying goes.
The tall handsome drummer took off his jacket and released a catch or something and immediately a broad and beautiful pair of angel-white feathered wings sprouted from his back. The purple-haired girl clenched both her fists and with a flash, blades of pure energy sprung from her hands, crackling with psionic force. The boy in the yellow trench coat held up his own hands, popping off a few multi-colored firecrackers, but the threat was clear all the same. The denim-clad pair stood next to each other, but from what Willow had already seen from them, it was pretty clear that the could handle themselves just as well, if not better as some of the others.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Xander shouted out, holding up his hands in a non-threatening manner. "What the heck? You guys dressed up as X-men too! COOL!"
"So let me guess," the girl that had been Psylocke commented, "Jean Grey, Iceman, Cyclops and..." she paused as she looked further up and saw Cordelia with her brunette and white-striped hair, "and Rogue. Right? Whose the other one?"
"Oh, she's Kendra, wasn't here on Halloween, just visiting," Buffy brushed off the other Slayer, before stepping forward and with more command in her voice, "You guys are the band; "Dingoes Ate My Baby" right? Name aside, I've seen you around before. You aren't bad guys, and the X-men are not killers or thugs. We don't fight unless we have absolutely no other choice. Now stand down."
"Yep, she dressed as old Red Eye alright," Oz grunted, sheathing his claws for the moment.
"How come you guys didn't answer Cyclops' distress call on Halloween?" Buffy wanted to know. "And why haven't you come out to the HSL sooner? We could've used your help you know?"
"Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we don't want to fight!" the winged drummer shouted back at her.
"You kinda seemed raring to go a second ago," Cordy commented as she slowly landed beside the now grounded Willow.
"We've been attacked several times already," the redhead keyboardist explained. "We've had to defend ourselves from lots of different people and... things."
"So have we," Buffy pointed out, "Why do you think we started the HSL in the first place? So that everybody can have a support system. Nobody makes anybody do anything they don't want or are not willing to do. We're still building our base outside of town, we have half the town on our membership roster already, but no more than fifty to a hundred working on that base. You could have at least let us know about you so that we could offer both protection... and an explanation as to what happened to you. Maybe even offer somethings to help you in controlling your abilities if you want. Since you say you've been attacked, obviously you've seen a few that either couldn't control their abilities, or let having those abilities go to their heads."
"And do you realize how many major league hotties there are in this town now after Halloween?" Xander pointed out excitedly.
"Shut up dweeb boy!" Cordy snapped at the ice mutant.
"So what did happen then?" the winged drummer crossed his arms and smirked, not believing anything they'd said so far.
"A chaos mage, named Ethan, and the one that sold us our costumes, used a spell to turn everybody into their costumes, summoning the spirits of the people, or other things, we dressed as from other dimensions and universes," Willow explained. "To do that, he tapped into the very Force of Chaos itself, making the changes the spirits did to us, permanent. The powers, the memories, everything... It won't go away. We're... we're really mutants."
"Well, that's not so bad," the boy in the yellow trench coat blurted out.
"Yeah, you're the only one that actually liked this Devon," the cute brunette argued.
"Well who doesn't want super powers when they've already got them?" Devon argued back, only to be answered when Buffy, Cordelia, Oz, and the entire rest of the band raised their hands.
"How about we do some introductions, then we can figure out where to go from there, OK?" Willow offered as a change of subject, blushing as it turned out only she, Xander, Devon and Kendra had been the only ones not to raise their hands.
"As I said earlier, my name is Willow Rosenberg," she then pointed at Iceman, "Xander Harris, Cordelia Chase, and Buffy Summers. Oh, and Kendra, who is visiting from out of town."
The band stood there for several long moments before finally, Oz, as the apparent leader, just sighed and nodded his head. He pointed at himself and simply said, "Oz. Wolverine."
Blinking in surprise at the monosyllabic response, Willow then paid attention to the others as they, one-by-one introduced themselves and who they dressed as. The boy in the yellow trench coat went next. "I'm Devon MacLeigh, lead singer and male vocal for the awesome rock and pop band "Dingoes Ate My Baby", and I picked up some cool looking red retro sunglasses and this stylin' coat from the costume shop... uh, and..." he scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment and near-mumbled the rest, "... and wound up becoming Jubilee of the X-Men and Generation X."
"Hunh," Buffy grunted, then replied, "I lost a bet."
The purple-haired girl went next, "My name is Danielle King, female vocal, which actually has gotten better since I picked up the accent. Anyway, as you've no doubt already guessed," she held up her still crackling energy blades, "I dressed up as the sometimes X-man Psylocke. Apparently the version that I dressed up as, was still a member of the England-based group/Excalibur/, which explains why I didn't get your radio summons."
The drummer stepped up, flapping his wings in demonstration as he told them, "My name is Adam Kennedy, and as you can tell I dressed up as the X-man Archangel, though it wasn't my intention at the time after slipping on the fake wings and spray-painting a halo on my shirt."
Which left the denim-clad pair, the redhead keyboardist and the cute brunette. "My name is Scott Cassidy, and this here is Kaitlyn Janeway. I'm on the keys, she's on base. And while I now have the vocals to take over as lead singer, in the interest of not killin' the audience, I'm sticking with what I know. I dressed up as Banshee from the X-men, and I got not only his powers, but all his knowledge about espionage and being with Interpol too. So best not be trying anything, eh boyo?"
"I dressed up as Shadow Cat," Kaitlyn softly told them all as she stood next to Scott.
"And you pretty much guessed who we dressed as already," Willow said. "Why don't we go back inside and talk about things, see where we stand and what you want to do or whatever. We won't force you to do anything, promise. And you have your own telepath to make sure that I don't try anything," she said this much more for the keyboardist's benefit.
"Fine," Oz growled, and then lead the way back inside.
/Outside the Bronze/
/One Hour Later/
He used to be the scrawny one. He used to be the weakling. He used to be made fun of and he was never allowed in there. He stared with pure hatred at the building known to all as the Bronze, and felt his muscles clench. His very, very big muscles.
He refused to be ignored any longer, refused to be cast aside anymore like he had been so far. He would make them listen to him and make them like him and then he'd finally be popular.
At first, after Halloween he'd been afraid of his new body, his powers, he'd hidden away to protect people from him. But day after day, he'd bit by bit lost his initial perspective as his powers both grew, and he slowly gained control over them. And with that control came understanding. The understanding that with power, his unstoppable power, came the right to to use it the way he wanted to use it, his way, however and whatever he wanted to do with it.
So that was exactly what he's gonna do.
/Inside the Bronze/
"So you're the ones who started up that HSL group?" Adam interrogated the X-Slayerettes.
"A bit unintentionally," Willow tried to explain, "But yeah, we got blamed for being the founding members. Probably because we were the first ones who had an explanation as to what and why it happened. After the Battle Royale, things just kind of fell into place after that. We've been recruiting new members everyday. And like I said, a lot of our members are no more than people that know the story and want nothing more than a little bit of safety and security. Although a few have theories of more... militaristic possibilities, for the large part we're encouraging the view that we're like an extended, supernatural neighborhood watch program."
"We've heard the spiel," Oz interrupted, "Doesn't explain why we got attacked by a couple of gargoyles and harpies, and then two Darth Vader wannabes with a guy in iron jacketed armor."
"Had a penchant for talking in third-person, green cape and was as much a Doctor Doom wannabe as the other two?" Xander put forth.
"Yeah," Oz nodded in agreement with the description.
Xander nodded back, "Can't say much about the first two, but the Trio, as they call themselves, we've had a couple of run ins with them. They don't tend to work without kiddie gloves, so when you take out the stops and start playing hardball, you can sometimes catch'em off guard and get them to retreat without actually crossing any lines."
"So you guys were already here at the Bronze during Halloween?" Buffy asked.
"Most of us," Oz answered.
"Uh, Scott and me were running a little late when . . . uh, when the . . . spell hit us," Kaitlyn told them, "We didn't have communicators or anything except the costumes and our mutant powers, and then we got attacked by..."
All of a sudden there was a loud crash from the entrance to the Bronze and it was almost like a bomb went off as debris exploded inwards, followed very shortly by the man that caused it in the first place. An eight foot muscled man in dark orange armor, including a domed helmet that left his eyes and mouth uncovered.
". . . the Juggernaut . . ." Kaitlyn finished in stunned shock.
"We are so fucked," Xander stated with morbid finality, only moments before the screaming started and everybody else in the crowd started running.
"Hey, where's everybody going? The party's only just getting started!" the mountain of mutant mystic might bellowed.
"No time," Buffy snapped. "Kaitlyn, Adam, Cordy, Willow. Get the people out. If anybody wants to stay and fight, tell them to stay out of his line of sight. Devon, Scott, Xander, you're with me on long range. Danielle, Oz, Kendra. /AFTER/ we get him to slow down enough, you'll be on close-combat. And if anybody has a problem with me telling you what to do, deal with it! Now MOVE!"
Everybody exploded into action at that, Buffy picking up and then throwing the table at the Juggernaut, which was sufficient to draw his attention away from the crowd. And onto them.
"We are /so/ fucked!" Xander insisted as he formed his ice armor and immediately formed a couple of Freeze Balls, not even bothering with warning as he threw both out. Unfortunately all they seemed to do was form a small bit of frost on his armor which quickly evaporated, doing next to no damage, if any at all.
Buffy followed up with a mild optic blast, again, not even enough to make him flinch. Juggernaut sneered at them and bellowed again, "That didn't even tickle. So, babe, you wanna dance? Fine by me. LET'S DANCE!!" Then he threw down his leg in a foot stomp, the shock waves and tremors knocking a lot of people to their knees, except for those that were flying, the Juggernaut, Buffy, Kendra, and Oz.
/'Willow, get those people out of here!'/ Buffy silently shouted through her psychic connection to the red haired telepath.
"We don't have time to be subtle," Willow suddenly shouted to the others on rescue duty. "We'll build it back later. Cordy, Adam, blow out the walls and get as many people out through the holes as you can!" Then she turned her own powers against the walls and even the ceiling to create holes big enough to fit almost a dozen people through at a time.
Xander and Buffy kept blasting the Juggernaut off and on, making him smirk and laugh, but it kept him from chasing after the crowd and within a few minutes, it was just the Juggernaut, the X-Slayerettes and the Dingoes.
"So, Slim," Oz addressed Buffy as it left them and the Juggernaut in the middle of the destruction of the teen dance club, "what's the plan?"
"Even if we wanted to, do you think we could kill him?" she asked. "We subdue him and get his helmet off so Willow and Danielle can put the whammy on him, then we deal with it from there. Got a problem with that/Wolverine/?"
"Nope."
"Good," Buffy put her shades away and let her anger fuel her power, her eyes lancing with crimson energy as she allowed it to build up more and more.
"Heh heh heh, think you're gonna hurt me now you little punks! I'm not the scrawny one anymore, I'M THE TOUGH GUY!!" With a yell the Juggernaut started to run full tilt towards the group. Buffy just let loose with a medium-level optic blast, which didn't even slow him down.
The floor suddenly turning to slick ice, however, did slip him up so he at least went off course and landed on his back after crashing into the one wall that didn't have any holes in it yet. Iceman got up, and uncharacteristic of the "real" Iceman, or the X-men in general, he started to pour on the ice beams covering the immobile form in an iceberg-sized frost.
"Uh, isn't that a bit overkill?" Kaitlyn questioned.
Buffy, her voice cold and hard, answered, "This is the Juggernaut we're fighting here. With him there doesn't even exist 'kill', let alone 'overkill'. Oz, Danielle, when he breaks out of that, do you think you can get his helmet off? We need to get that off him so Willow can put him to sleep."
"Do my best," Oz said as he unsheathed his claws with a loud /schnikt/.
"What he said," the purple-haired singer replied.
Together they approached the mountain of ice, and stopped several feet away when cracks began to appear all over it. The cracks continued for another few seconds before ultimately, it exploded in a shower of ice cubes and the Juggernaut got back to his feet.
"Brrrr. Now I need something to warm me back up," he bellowed at them. Then he caught sight of Danielle and smirked at her, "Yeah baby, you'll do nicely. Come to papa and warm me up."
"OK/now/ I want to hurt the blighter," she hissed, igniting her psi-blades.
Together the pair leaped at their foe, who reached up to catch them. An optic blast from Buffy knocked away the hand that would've grabbed Danielle, but the other hand, which was actually a fist, still wound up hitting Oz and knocking him, painfully, back to one of the far walls.
"Cordy, make sure you're wearing your gloves. You /really/ don't want to absorb anything from Juggernaut!" Willow warned her friend as she started to telekinetically hurl debris at the Juggernaut as a distraction.
Danielle danced around the armored titan, who seemed intent on grabbing her rather than punching her. Psylocke's ninja and acrobatic skills coming in real handy as she dodged his surprisingly quick frame. Kendra was there in a flash to help the mutant psychic out, but the first time she tried to punch the man in the back, where he wouldn't see her and dodge, she cried out in pain and pulled back either a sprained or broken hand, and the Juggernaut didn't even notice her until she screamed out loud.
"This isn't working!" Adam screamed at Buffy.
The mutant Slayer glanced around and then caught sight of Scott standing in shock next to Kaitlyn. An idea struck her and she shouted over at the two, who joined her for a quick powwow. After they were done, Kaitlyn vanished into the floor and Willow suddenly pulled Cordelia and Danielle back with silent telepathic commands.
"Aw, what's da matter?" Juggernaut teased in a baby voice. "Don't wanna play no more?"
"Nah, just thought we'd limit your options a little bit," Buffy sarcastically replied.
"Huh?"
At that moment, from the floorboards a single, slender hand rose up and latched onto the Juggernaut's ankles. A moment later he started to sink into the floor until all but his upper torso was submerged into the solid concrete floor.
"Hey, wait a second, I know this trick!" he bellowed out. "And those eye beams. The ice. You guys are the X-men!"
"Sort of," Buffy answered him. "We're the kids that were given the X-men's powers, same way you were given the Juggernaut's powers. On Halloween, right? We can help you..." She started to explain what had happened, but stopped when he suddenly started laughing out loud.
"You want to help me? You want to /help/ me?! BITCH! You can't even /stop/ me! I'm the /Unstoppable Juggernaut/!! RRAAAWWWWRRRR!!!!" With a mighty roar he ripped himself from the confinement of the floor and got to his feet.
"Now Scott," Buffy ordered, while covering her ears. An action everyone else, save the Juggernaut quickly mimicked.
Taking a deep breath, Scott stood right in front of the mystically empowered mutant and then he began to scream. At first it sounded like a jet engine starting up the turbines, then it sounded like a plane about to take off, and then just as the Juggernaut took his first steps, it began to reach the deafening sound levels of a military fighter jet hitting the afterburners while still on deck. About that same moment, anything that was in front of Scott and wasn't bolted down, and even a few things that /were/ bolted down, began to fly away after being shredded to pieces.
The Juggernaut tried to take a second step, but it took him about ten seconds to even place it down. As a result, Scott raised the level to the point where it didn't matter how much ear protection you had, you were hurting, and it took the Juggernaut over thirty seconds to take a third step. He also seemed to lose any interest in taking a forth as a look of strain filled his face and he raised his arms to cover where his ears would be, but because of his helmet, he couldn't reach them to cover them further.
Finally, having had enough, and being in genuine pain, albeit just an earache, the Juggernaut ripped off his own helmet to cover his ears with his own massive hands.
/'NOW Willow!'/ Buffy psychically ordered.
Without a moments hesitation, and ignoring the pain in her own ears, Willow turned her concentration on the Juggernaut's now-unprotected mind, and within seconds triggered the command to sleep, and reinforced it with everything she had. Seconds later, he finally collapsed to the floor, asleep. Only after that did Scott finally stop screaming, allowing his friends to uncover their ears.
"Well, that was fun," Oz commented, getting up from where he'd been slammed into the wall. "What do you guys do on Wednesday nights for an encore?"
"For some reason, all the really freaky stuff tends to happen on Tuesdays," Xander replied.
/Watcher Zabuto's Apartment/
/Later that Night/
"You understand the charges you are laying against Watcher Giles, don't you Watcher Zabuto?" the muffled voice spoke over the phone.
"I would not have made them if I did not understand them Sir Travers," the Jamaican Watcher answered into his line of the phone. "Watcher Giles has become complacent in my eyes. He allows his Slayer and her teenage American friends to dictate what they do, and he completely ignored my warnings about the signs."
"Yes, and as our conference call with Watcher Giles proved, he does have more experience with the Hellmouth and its happenings. According to his own reports, signs and portents of coming threats to humanity, not to mention the frequent demon attacks and vampires that populate the town, it is understandable, and forgivable as to his, while not outright dismissal, but rather a lack of panic on his part. Thankfully, it is not something you and your own Slayer have to deal with that often in your own home base."
"Yes sir, and I acknowledge that and I understand the reasoning for appearing to not immediately respond to my warnings," Zabuto spoke back, "Yet it does not refute the evidence of a lack of discipline and allowing teenage civilians to become so ingrained with the Slayer to be allowed to discuss matters of security and safety with Watchers... It is outrageous Sir Travers!"
"Wasn't it you, yourself Watcher Zabuto who made the observation that Watcher Giles and Slayer Summers need to, quote/unquote "gather an army of loyal followers to combat this coming threat" or something like that?"
"Yes sir..."
"Then I would say, given the glowing recommendations Watcher Giles reported on these teenagers, that she has gotten off to a marvelous start. However," Travers interrupted Zabuto before he could interrupt him. "Given the grave nature of the signs, and the wave of chaos that purged the planet originating from the Hellmouth, we are authorizing you and Slayer Kendra to remain on the Hellmouth and to aid Slayer Summers and Watcher Giles in guarding it from ever being overrun by demons. This does not make you his subordinate, nor he yours. You'll have to find someway to work together old boy. Make us proud."
With a heavy sigh, yet still much respect in his voice, Zabuto replied, "Yes sir."
Then the Watcher's Council hung up on him.
TBC...